The distinguished English writer D. M. Thomas interrupts the last chapter of Memories and Hallucinations with a brief review of his book by his cat. Kitty has complaints: there are inaccuracies and omissions, there is the absence of pattern to the narrative. “In short,” concludes the cat, which is also named Thomas, “I can't recommend this book.”

Clearly this was meant to be funny, a pre-emptive attack on anticipated surly notices. But employing a house pet, even an extremely literate cat, to do the work of a wit or an apologist struck me as desperate, not to say awfully cute. It's as if Mr. Thomas had leafed through his manuscript—padded out with his poems, plus his first published short story—and realized that the book had problems he couldn't fix.

“A kind of walkabout through parts of his life,” is the way the cat describes it. The memoir bristles with confessions, few of them illuminating. It may well be that truth is only to be revealed in serious fiction. It is certain that, among his seven novels, Mr. Thomas has given us at least one masterful vision of good and evil in our time. The White Hotel—dense, experimental, erotic, an account of a woman's “journey of the soul” and descent to the hell of the Babi Yar massacre—appeared here in 1981 without warning, without the support of the English critics, without advance hyperbole. Apparently in common with other readers, I can still remember the moment I casually opened it, began reading and was swept into an extraordinary narrative.

That book eventually bestowed fame and notoriety on Mr. Thomas who, until his 46th year, had been an obscure poet, novelist and college professor. In 1982, as the paperback edition was about to appear, he accepted an academic appointment at American University in Washington, but before the term began, fled home. It was said that he was troubled by his success. Nothing of the sort. He says he loved having written a book that was widely read. It was canonization he could not endure. As he observed in a piece written that year for The New York Times Magazine, “I fear becoming institutionalized—made respectable.”

Fat chance. Mr. Thomas was never much for conventional respectability. “Wenching,” as he quaintly calls it, was a serious preoccupation. Days were spent with Maureen, his former wife, and their two children, evenings with Denise, the mistress who became another former wife, and their son. Then, when he got lucky, there were the usual dalliances with nubile young women who caught his fancy. He also found time to produce not only the novels but six volumes of poetry and several translations of Russian poets.

In 1986, Mr. Thomas suffered a severe bout of depression and, he says, began psychiatric treatment with a Viennese-trained Freudian analyst, a woman. His memoir is anchored in those sessions, careering about from childhood to adulthood to family history, but always returning to the times on the couch. Are they memories or the hallucinations of the title? I haven't a clue. Oddly, for all his artistry at translating emotion into memorable event, Mr. Thomas is not very good at conveying the dreadful burden of chronic, invasive, free-floating depression.

He is obsessed by coincidences, he has dreams that prefigure reality and he is terrific at remembering creative connections. In about two and a half pages, he tells us how The White Hotel was born, and the account is fascinating. From time to time, Memories offers recollections that are funny or sad, but the book lacks energy. It is as if, set down in print, Mr. Thomas's monumental self-absorption had drained all the drive out of a unique gift for remembering and recording.